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ClassicGaming Museum
 ClassicGaming.com's Museum
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) - 1985-1995
(Also known as the Famicom)
"Now you're playing… with power."
System History
 The future of videogames looked bleak. The catastrophic crash of 1984 had wiped out or severely weakened all the major home videogame companies, and home computers were becoming more and more popular. It seemed as if the home videogame system would become a thing of the past.
After the crash, only two companies were making any serious effort at selling videogames. INTV (the company that owned the rights to the Intellivision) and a Japanese company named Nintendo. Nintendo started out in 1889 as a playing card company and started getting into videogames in the early '80s, producing hits like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Their Famicom (FAMIly COMputer) videogame system had done pretty well in Japan, selling 2.5 million systems in 1984. After negotiations with Atari to sell the Famicom in the U.S. fell through, Nintendo decided to release the system in the States on their own in 1985, ignoring the weak videogame market and the recent crash.
Selling the system to American retailers wasn't easy. Most were hesitant to buy videogame systems after the crash of the entire market just a year ago, and didn't want to get burned. So Nintendo took steps to make the system seem less like a videogame system and more like a computer or a VCR. They called the U.S. version of the Famicom the Nintendo Entertainment System, and designed it to look less like a videogame console and more like something that would fit in with other home entertainment appliances. Nintendo even agreed to buy back all unsold inventory in order to get retailers to take a chance on them. The system was originally targeted for release in spring '85, but the release date was pushed back. After test-marketing in the New York City area in late fall, the system was released nationwide in February, 1986.
Nintendo released the NES in two different bundles: one at $249 with the R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) unit, two controllers, a lightgun, Gyromite (a R.O.B. game), Duck Hunt, and Super Mario Bros., and the other set at $199 with controllers and Super Mario Bros. The NES was a huge success and was soon outselling competing systems (which at the time was only the INTV, the Sega Master System, and the Atari 7800) by a ten-to-one ratio.
Nintendo had learned from the mistakes of its predecessors, and instituted a very strict licensing system for third-party game developers (see below). This helped prevent the over-saturation of the software market which had brought about the '84 crash.
Ironically (if you're familiar with the Nintendo 64), Nintendo promised a disk drive add-on for the NES in time for Christmas 1986. It was never released in the States. The Famicom version of the drive did come out in Japan, but it never gained much of a following.
Throughout the late '80s, the NES enjoyed tremendous popularity, blowing all the other systems away and playing a prominent role in the lives of many American and Japanese adolescents. Nintendo ruled over its empire with an iron fist, heavily controlling advertising, distribution, production, and pricing. Retailers that sold unlicensed games or charged lower prices were threatened or had their shipments withheld. Their tactics led to many lawsuits and investigations by the Federal Trade Commission.
As the 1990s began, Nintendo found itself threatened by next-generation 16-bit consoles like the TurboGrafx-16 and the Genesis, but the NES was still the best selling system on the market. Regardless, the NES was beginning to show its age, so in 1991 Nintendo announced that the Super NES would be released that September. Unfortunately, the SNES would not be compatible with the NES and NES owners began to wonder how much support their system would receive after the SNES was released. Fortunately, Nintendo didn't drop support for the 8-bit system completely, which was a smart move considering the SNES's slow start.
Strangely, the SNES and the NES had only a $10 price difference throughout 1992. This encouraged people to buy the SNES, since it was only $10 more.
Nintendo released the NES 2 in 1993. It was a smaller, cheaper version of the original NES in a more SNESish case with a standard cartridge slot (instead of the "zero insertion force" slot in the original NES which was very dirt-prone and easy to break). Nintendo pushed the system for the upcoming Christmas season for $49.
Support for the NES dwindled as the SNES's popularity grew. Nintendo officially discontinued the NES in 1995.
In the end, the NES had sold over 62 million systems and over 500 million games, making it the most popular videogame system in history, up to that time.
Today, the NES lives on as many of its games are available over the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console service.
Games
The NES had some really great games: the Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Contra, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Mega Man and Castlevania series… Metroid, Punch-Out!!, River City Ransom... the list goes on and on.
Although Nintendo supposedly had a strict licensing policy (only games with the "Nintendo Seal of Quality" could be sold legally), many games were merely mediocre clones or crappy licensed games. Nintendo's "Seal of Quality" wasn't a measure of how good the game was, the seal just meant that the company had paid a licensing fee and that the game didn't contain adult content. Nintendo censored all U.S. releases, removing questionable words or adultish content. While this protected Nintendo's image, it effectively alienated its over-13 market. Nintendo also had strict third-party programming policies for many years: if you programmed for Nintendo, you only programmed for Nintendo. This policy helped kill off most of the NES's early competitors, like the SMS. Companies were also limited to releasing two games a year, and Nintendo manufactured all NES cartridges themselves to control production (this hurt them greatly during the 1988 chip shortage, and the practice was discontinued in 1990). Those types of policies were later changed due to government pressure.
Getting around Nintendo's strict policies was tough, but the pirate NES market overseas was huge. Pirates usually sold "multicarts," cartridges with many games on one cartridge, but some pirates made completely new games (like Somari) and even ports of popular arcade games (such as Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat). In America, it was much harder to distribute unlicensed NES software, but Tengen, a subsidiary of Atari Games and former Nintendo licensee, announced in 1988 that it had bypassed Nintendo's "lockout chip" and planned to manufacture and distribute its games independently. The lockout chip was Nintendo's method of controlling what NES-compatible games were manufactured. A microchip inside the NES prevented all cartridges from functioning unless they contained a similar chip. Since this "authenticating processor" was a Nintendo patent, only Nintendo could legally provide the component to companies who wished to produce NES-compatible cartridges. After Tengen's announcement, Nintendo sued Atari Games for copyright infringement, claiming that Tengen had illegally copied the lockout chip technology. The case wasn't settled until 1991, when the courts decided in favor of Nintendo. In the meantime, Tengen released several decent NES games, including Toobin', Gauntlet, and Pac-Man.
Another company called Color Dreams figured out how to bypass Nintendo's lockout chip in 1989. Due to a legal loophole (by bypassing the chip, they didn't infringe on any copyrights), Color Games was free to make NES games and sell them at a lower cost (because they didn't have to pay high licensing fees to Nintendo). Unlike Tengen, Color Dreams' games really sucked and not many retailers would carry them because of threats from Nintendo. So Color Dreams looked to God for help... literally. The company changed their name to Wisdom Tree and focused on producing religion-themed games such as Sunday Funday, Bible Buffet, Spiritual Warfare, and Bible Adventures. These games sucked... well, biblically.
There are hundreds of NES games (perhaps over a thousand counting pirates and overseas titles). There are tons of great games, and tons of games that are alarmingly bad. Besides the legendary series almost everybody knows, gamers should check out R.C. Pro-Am, the Ninja Gaiden series, Blaster Master, Rygar... we could go on and on. Most games by Konami, Capcom, and Codemasters are good for hours of fun. Meanwhile, try to avoid games by Color Dreams, T*HQ, and Action Hi-Tech (unless you'd like a good laugh).
Accessories
The original NES came with a simple, rectangular "Control Pad" with A, B, Start and Select buttons. The NES control pad single-handedly popularized the four-directional "cross" that has been a mainstay of all subsequent systems' controllers. Nintendo released many other controllers, including the NES Max which was shaped like a small Genesis controller and used a round sliding disc for control. Another popular controller was the NES Advantage, which was a large arcade-style joystick with lots of special abilities such as slow motion and autofire.
The "Zapper" light gun was a pack-in with the most popular NES package, and there was a fairly good number of light gun games (Duck Hunt, Hogan's Alley, Wild Gunman, etc.). If you're a fan of light guns (for some strange reason), the NES is the system to have.
 Some of the stranger NES accessories include the Power Pad exercise mat (you had to step on buttons to control the game), the U-Force 3D controller which sensed the movement of a hand over its surface (sometimes even successfully!), the infamous VR-wannabe Power Glove, and the aforementioned Robotic Operating Buddy (R.O.B.). R.O.B. was just a gimmick to sell the NES to stores that hated videogames, because they weren't "videogames," they were "robot games." Only two R.O.B. titles were made: Gyromite and Stack-up.
Codemasters (yet another unlicensed NES producer, based in England) designed the Game Genie, which was distributed by Galoob Toys. This accessory allowed players to use cheats on NES games by tweaking the program code. Nintendo sued to prevent the Game Genie from being sold, but they didn't win and it became quite popular. The Game Genie later appeared on other platforms, such as the Genesis.
Many people wonder what the expansion port on the bottom of the original NES is for: it was originally intended for some sort of multiplayer linkup system, but things didn't work out.
There were also many illegal accessories, clones, and pirate games. Check out tsr's NES Museum for more information.
Memorabilia / Related Products
 The NES's popularity spawned various cartoons, movies (two!), clothing, breakfast cereals and other assorted trinkets such as cups, pencils, lunch boxes, etc. Nintendo promoted all of their products in their very own "propaganda" magazine, Nintendo Power (which still exists to this day). Almost every child of the NES era had a subscription, wooed in by its low price, previews of upcoming games, game tips, and special promotions, the most popular being a free game (Dragon Warrior) with a year's subscription.
In November 1989, The Wizard was released. The movie was about a boy (Fred Savage) and his two friends who run away from home and hitchhike cross country to compete in the "ultimate video game championship." Critics hated it, calling The Wizard a "thinly disguised commercial for Nintendo video games." It featured scores of references to Nintendo and the NES (the "villain" used a Power Glove, for example), and the climax of the movie featured the grand unveiling of Super Mario Bros. 3.
There was also a Super Mario Bros. movie, starring Bob Hoskins as "Mario Mario," John Leguizamo as "Luigi Mario," and Dennis Hopper as "King Koopa." Thankfully, no sequels have been released.
Game Music
The NES is widely recognized as the console which elevated videogame music from simple beeps and whistles to an art form composed of beeps and whistles. Almost all gamers from the Nintendo era have a favorite NES tune or two, and a frightening number are avid devotees of 8-bit soundtracks. It seems that virtually all NES music has been sequenced (sometimes by professional musicians) and is available in computer-friendly MIDI and MOD format. One of the best places for NES (and other consoles) MIDIs is The Video Game Music Archive.
Tech guru Kevin Horton answered the prayers of many NES fans when he developed the NSF/NESM (NES Sound Format/NES Music) media file format. NSF files contain music data extracted from the actual ROMs of NES games. When played, they sound virtually identical to actual 8-bit NES music (since it's the same music code). Satisfy all your NSF needs at Zophar's incredible NSF Archive.
In addition to video, the original NES had a separate audio output jack which allowed gamers to listen to NES music through a stereo system in all its monaural glory. To save money, Nintendo cut out the A/V jacks on the redesigned NES 2. So you can't get a separate audio signal out of your NES 2 unless you perform this modification, also devised by Horton, to your machine. Don't attempt it unless you have electronics experience. For the experienced, you may also want to check out all the NES technical information at nesdev.parodius.com.
In Japan, videogame music is a healthy industry. There are popular bands who perform live versions of NES music to screaming fans. Symphonies are known to play selections from Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest in Japan) in concert. CDs of arranged game music sell in large numbers. Sadly, game music is less respected in other parts of the world, but you can buy imported Japanese game music CDs from places like Game Music Online.
Emulation
The NES is one of the most widely emulated systems, with around 20 or 30 different emulators of varying quality. You can find a few of the better ones in our NES emulators section.
Links
Posted by burberry  at 2011-12-03 23:56:36 Voted 10.00 on 12/03/11
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